mousme | On explaining privilege

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racefail09

On explaining privilege

I keep coming back to RaceFail09. I really wish I wasn't, but it's troubling me, for obvious reasons, and not-so-obvious reasons.

I am not going to try to unpack the invisible knapsack here. I'm just thinking out loud.

Okay, so I am what the Intarwebs would consider a PWC (Privileged White Chick). So far, so good. I am also a lesbian. That makes me both a woman and homosexual. Still with me? Good.

This means that I get the dubious privilege of explaining privilege to those around me who are either not women, or not homosexual, or neither of the above. I get questions on the topic of GLBT issues all the time, especially when I start a new job/meet someone new/enter a new situation. Essentially, I spend a lot of time coming out to people, and then explaining What It All Means. Whether I like it or not, people assume that I am somehow the Official Representative of the Local GLBT Community (which is totally not the case, and I usually try to explain this right off the bat, as part of my little GLBT 101 spiel).

Clicking on a lot of links in the Epic Debate Fail Of Doom, I am coming across a plethora of posts by self-described PoCs (People of Colour), who are righteously annoyed at having to explain themselves to the PWPs (Privileged White People) who ask them for information/clarification/cluebats/etc. Some have downright been foaming at the mouth.

Okay. So I get that this is annoying/frustrating/makes you want to tear your hair out by the roots/possibly commit vehicular manslaughter after particularly stupid-seeming questions. I get it, I do. If one more person asks me if I would choose to be straight if I were given the opportunity, I may not be held responsible for my actions.

That being said, I feel that it is important for me to do this anyway, regardless of what my feelings are on the subject. Yes, it's annoying when someone proclaims that their good friend/cousin/mailmain/busboy is gay and that's totally fine with them, and it's annoying that they seem to want a pat and a cookie for it. But you know what?

They're not going to educate themselves.

It's as simple as that, really. If we, the People Lacking $Privilege, don't say: "You are mistaken in your assumption, and here's why," they are never, ever going to get it. No way, no how. I'm not suggesting that we need to deliver a three-hour multimedia presentation on the ins and outs of privilege, and spoon-feed it to them. But give them something, for crying out loud!

PWPs, myself included, are far from immune from asking really stupid questions to which we honestly don't have the answer. From my perspective, when I ask a stupid question, it's okay to look at me as though I just grew antlers (although my feelings will be hurt, I have yet to die from that particular affliction), but then I would very much like to be told why my question was stupid. It was asked in good faith, and a good faith answer would be appreciated. Even if it's an answer along the lines of: "That question isn't relevant/is stupid, and I don't have the time/energy/capacity to explain it to you in full, but some research in $Place is a good place to start."

Yes, it's tiresome. No, we shouldn't have to do it. No, each individual should not have to suddenly be the representative of $Group to which they belong. It sucks. Absolutely. Nonetheless, it's the reality of the situation, and at the very least the PWPs ought to be encouraged to move past those first tentative steps they're taking, to take the initiative and go out and educate themselves. First steps aren't enough, but if they get whacked on the head with the You-Are-Privileged-And-Therefore-Wrong-Forever Stick, then they're going to pull back into their shell and never come out again, and now it's a lost cause. First steps don't deserve a cookie, but they don't deserve a beatdown, either.

Oh, and while I can fully understand that that last paragraph is essentially an argument about tone, please rest assured that I am not trying to say "If only people had been more civil/polite/less hateful/whatever attribute you please, then this terrible misunderstanding would never have happened," because of course that's patently not true. Maybe the debate would have taken on a different form, and that form would likely have been equally filled with fail on both sides. I'm just lamenting the fact that many people (the aforementioned PWPs) are going to come away from this angry, more confused than ever, and less willing to learn.

I keep swearing I'm done with this, but then I come back and poke at it some more, so I'm no longer going to promise anything. :P

:::ETA:::

I have apparently been linked into rydra_wong's Linkspam of Doom thing.

So, dear New People Following The Fail To My LJ, I feel compelled to lay down a ground rule, should you want to comment.

Don't be an asshat.

This means no flaming, no personal attacks, no mudslinging, no outing people. Post in good faith, and with an open mind. Wait ten minutes before typing your responses, if you must. If you're still mad, then wait ten more minutes.

My friends (LJ and RL) are a varied bunch, with a wide range of experiences and opinions. The one thing they have in common in this LJ is respect of my space. I would ask that you also show this respect in your posts. (So far so good, btw.)

If you don't follow this one rule, I will ban you summarily, no questions asked.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

You can't cure prejudice by simply shuffling your prejudices around.

I agree; however, I don't consider acknowledging the ways past and current systems have benefited one group at the expense of another to be "shuffling [my] prejudices around". You can't cure prejudice by ignoring its influence.

I take people for who they are and I expect the same. I don't have any respect for prejudice and bigotry per se, but it is part of the human condition and some people who are prejudiced and bigoted have their redeeming qualities. At any rate, I refuse to feel guilty or sorry for someone else because someone who bears some arbitrary resemblance to me peed in their cornflakes. The concept of "privilege" is a destructive and divisive idea. If you want to get rid of prejudice then just get rid of it and treat people as individuals and demand that they treat you accordingly. Running around trying to convince people that they are "privileged" or "unprivileged" solves nothing. In fact, it makes the problem worse because it polarizes people into contentious groups.

At any rate, I refuse to feel guilty or sorry for someone else because someone who bears some arbitrary resemblance to me peed in their cornflakes.

There is a vast difference between recognizing the ways systemic prejudice benefits [group] as a whole, and very likely [member of group] individually, and feeling guilty about it. I recognize white privilege, accept that it benefits me in some ways, but I only feel guilty when I unapologetically take advantage of it when I know it's harmful in both tangible and intangible ways to other individuals/classes.

If you want to get rid of prejudice then just get rid of it and treat people as individuals and demand that they treat you accordingly. Running around trying to convince people that they are "privileged" or "unprivileged" solves nothing. In fact, it makes the problem worse because it polarizes people into contentious groups.

The people who hear "privilege" as a divisive attack are either incapable of comprehending the concept, or unwilling to lose the benefits they hold under the current system of institutional prejudice. Neither of those are compelling reasons to pretend that if I just stick my fingers in my ears and "la la la" loud enough there will no longer be any prejudice.

If you want to get rid of "systemic prejudice" stop thinking of people as "systems." The problem is collectivism. As long as you refuse to let go of your collectivist premises the problem will exist. Given that collective thinking is ingrained in human culture I think it will never go away completely as it is. The latest fashionable variant of collective thinking is thinking of people in terms of "privileged" and "unprivileged" groups. Prejudice is an individual problem, not a group problem. Only individuals think and only individuals act. "Institutional prejudice" is a floating abstraction. If you want to change prejudice, yes, indeed, stop obsessing over your group identity.

It’s precisely when we’re focused on things outside our group identities that those identities recede into the background. When someone’s throwing me a rope to get me out of a burning house, neither of us has much time for thinking about skin colors or nose shapes. We’re more interested in making sure we escape without being scorched to a crisp. Should we survive, we’ll feel kindly to each other. Our differences might even become a plus. If anything goes wrong, we might blame it on those differences. But at least, we’ll still focus on what we accomplished or didn’t accomplish as human beings.

Wake Up and Smell the PR (http://www.lewrockwell.com/rajiva/rajiva13.html) by Lila Rajiva

Prejudice is an individual problem when held and enacted solely through individuals; it isn't. To think otherwise is to assume nobody internalizes cultural messages, and that buying into the subtle stereotypes most people don't even recognize as stereotypes puts the individual at fault. That makes you far harsher than I; I don't think someone who equates "balls" with strength and "pussy" with weakness is prejudiced, I think he/she has internalized a message he/she's gotten since day one.

There are some prejudices which have become so ingrained in our culture that to treat them as individual cases would be endless - for every one person you managed to convince to stop behaving with prejudice, a new one is born that will grow up in the same culture, receiving the same messages, developing the same attitudes. To label those as systemic and/or institutional is to recognize they are shared, that no one person is at fault for them, and that fighting them at the root is far more efficient than blaming each individual.

To not be constantly aware of one's identity as [any number of identifiers] is a privilege, whether you find that term polarizing or not. If I, as a lesbian, pretend that in the US at this moment I am considered equal to a heterosexual woman, I am ignoring there are rights and privileges I will never receive based solely on that identity you claim I should ignore. When something is used to deny me equal treatment, I have every right to not pretend it doesn't exist; all that does is maintain a status quo that leaves me at a disadvantage.

Of course, as a straight white man (I'm gleaning straight from your profile; apologies if you're bi and I was too bold in my assumption), you're absolutely right that the only prejudice which negatively impacts you is individual; to that end I understand where you're coming from, and think we might as well agree to disagree at this point.

Yes, I'm straight, but that's not all I am. I don't define myself by group membership. Being straight means that I tend to be sexually attracted to the opposite sex; it does not define my entire identity nor my politics. I'm an individual first and any group memberships I undertake are merely expressions of personal preference and belief.

If I, as a lesbian, pretend that in the US at this moment I am considered equal to a heterosexual woman, I am ignoring there are rights and privileges I will never receive based solely on that identity you claim I should ignore. When something is used to deny me equal treatment, I have every right to not pretend it doesn't exist; all that does is maintain a status quo that leaves me at a disadvantage.

Ah, but you are equal. The big lie is that you are not. The prejudiced already believe and perpetuate such lies but you don't have to believe them. If you want to have the same options as all other members of society and demand equal treatment before the law the trick is not to get members of all other groups to "respect" your particular group: lesbians, Muslims, skin color, etc.; it is to get the state entirely out of the business of distinguishing people by group membership in the first place. I am entirely in favor of that. The law has no business of establishing group memberships for people or in treating them differently on the basis of some arbitrary group membership. Get the state out of the business of licensing domestic relationships entirely and the whole issue of "who is allowed to be married to whom" goes completely away. Such an approach, ending favoritism for some groups in law, is justice, and everyone can agree on that. You don't have to "respect" homosexuality per se to acknowledge that it is none of your business with whom someone else wants to enter a domestic arrangement. Putting the argument in terms of group membership and privileged and unprivileged groups merely entrenches group identies and encourages defensive grievance thinking.

I never said straight was all you are. It is an element of who you are that is used to give you societal advantages that people who are not straight do not have.

That doesn't mean I don't think you and I are equal, it means I recognize that you and I are not treated equally. I am denied rights because of my homosexuality you are not denied because of your heterosexuality. There are systems in place that put two equal people on unequal footing; you call it favoritism, I call it privilege, but we are talking about the same things - you just appear to limit the scope to legality, when I think ingrained social attitudes can be just as damaging.

Of course, were equal rights to stop being treated as a matter of public opinion, social attitudes would still be annoying, but not nearly as problematic.

Law supposedly is an objective codification of how the government is to exercise authority. When the law favors (or privileges) any group even a formerly "underprivileged" group it commits injustice. Law, to be law, cannot command injustice. Individuals, on the other hand, behave unjustly all the time. It's an unfortunate drawback of the human condition. We don't have to like it, and I don't, but I don't think it can be eliminated from the human condition. The best that we can do is not support it and insist that the law not reflect or encode such bad premises. What we do not need to do though is establish some arbitrary group memberships and designate them privileged or unprivileged and attempt to make "social justice", an oxymoron, you understand, by granting "compensatory favoritism" to those groups designated "unprivileged." That just perpetuates the whole problem, if not make it worse.

And I just don't think in an unequal society, fairness is as simple as "do the exact same thing to everyone". If you've got a scale with four weights on one side and two on the other, neither removing one weight from each nor adding one weight to each will balance it. You can add two weights to the two side and none to the four, you can remove two from the four side and none from the two side, you can remove one from the four side and add it to the two side, but you will never balance it by deciding the only method to achieve balance is to not treat each side exactly the same. When one group is working from a disadvantage, you do not achieve equality by suddenly demanding the exact same treatment applied equally to both them and the group at an advantage.

Once you have your scale balanced? Then yeah, the only way to keep it balanced is to treat each side the same. But that only works when you're starting with equality.

This is a perfect illustration of what I mean. You cannot treat people as objects, as means to someone else's ends and get justice. People are not "little weights" that you can move around willy-nilly with the law — they have lives and rights, which is something to which both left and right collectivists are stone blind. Equality of outcome is something no "philosopher king" or "committee of concerned citizens" will ever be able to adjudicate to anyone's satisfaction, and the attempt to do so breeds more animosities than it cures, inevitably. People mouth words like "equality" without even thinking. It's hard enough to create and maintain a legal system that dispenses equal treatment let alone a system which attempts to create equal outcomes — and I dare anyone to find any two people who would even agree on what those equalities of outcome would even be. It cannot be done. When the law becomes a tool to manipulate people and outcomes then it is no longer a tool of justice; it is the arbitrary toy of competing political pressure groups, until it breaks down completely.

What we do not need to do though is establish some arbitrary group memberships...

This jumped out at me upon rereading; I think it's a good example of just how fundamentally at-odds we are. Where you are seeing the creation of groups, divisions newly established, I'm seeing divisions that were created long ago.

I do agree with you - that it is wrong, and entirely against the purpose of law, to create these arbitrary divisions and legislate as if one group deserves something the other doesn't. But you're working from a view that this is what's happening now; I'm working from the view that it has happened, and needs correcting.

Groupings are fluid and change all through time. Individuals come and go into and out of them. You're imagining a tinkertoy world of static clockwork that fits whatever definition you want it to have, now and into the future. The groups you imagine being established "long ago" do not exist except in the minds of collectivists.

People are not aggregates; they are individuals. The idea that there are "black people" or "gay people" who can be legally defined and benefited (or abused) without running afoul of the law of unintended consequences is a delusion. There is no "average wealth" in any meaningful sense of the term; there is no "average utility" or "average satisfaction." Five joyful people and one miserable one do not constitute a "moderately happy group." The group is an abstraction; the individuals are the only real, concrete entities. "Happiness" is non-distributive.

The best that we can do is not support it and insist that the law not reflect or encode such bad premises.

I think you're wrong.

I think the best we can do, includes not only "not supporting it," but actively preventing others from supporting it, and trying to mitigate the harm that has been done, and is being done.

The best we can do also includes getting informed, so we know what the real problems are--and it's not like there's any shortage of information about how racism works, who it affects, and why it's bad for everyone.

You can use persuasion all you want and often it produces good results. When we try to use the law to police thought though, it always ends badly.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

On explaining privilege

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